The Erotic Mister Rose (1964) -- Normally, I wouldn't do a project with nothing but unknowns, but several things make this very interesting. It was Nick Phillips' second film, and was a blatant attempt to cash in on the financial success of The Immoral Mr. Teas, which played in virtually every grindhouse with runs as long as 27 weeks. Mr. Teas was a door to door dental appliance salesman. Everywhere he went, he encountered nude women. The film is narrated in true Nick Phillips style by Satan. His nemesis is Mr. Rose, who, when he is not collecting butterflies, is out stamping out porn. Most of the film is shot in B&W, and mostly in L.A., although it was set in San Francisco, so some exteriors were shot there. The nudity comes from 4 exotic dancers, the first three seen by Mr. Rose in a grind house while he was still on his crusade, the last observed from his apartment window, which succeeded in corrupting him.

Three women are named in the credits, Dani Fontaine, Laura Loren, and Mitzi Roget, but there is no way to tell which name belongs to which of the four women. It probably doesn't really matter, as I am sure those are stage names of L.A. area exotic dancers. All four women show breasts and a flash of buns, which was still enough to get you busted in 1964. All four scenes with the women were shot in color with no permits in different hotel rooms.

Interesting points:

The women have natural breasts. It was too early for implants, and none look like they have had silicone injections.

The idea of feminine beauty was very different then. All four would be unacceptably fat by today's standards.

It is a rare glimpse at 1964 San Francisco. A beach, for instance, in the film, is now the tourist Mecca, Pier 39.

IMDb knows nothing of this film

The transfer quality is amazing for a 1964 grindhouse unknown film.

We owe a debt of gratitude for these early pioneers in sleaze. Had they not risked arrest, we would not be seeing the same level of nudity in mainstream films today. This is a C+. For aficionados of early porn, this is a must see.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)

Since there is some current interest in Mario Van Peeble's film Baadasssss!, which about his own father's making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, I thought I'd take a look at the original. The discussion of this movie has to be divided into two separate issues: the movie and the cultural phenomenon.

It truly was a phenomenon.

Sweetback was the first highly profitable film made by a black independent filmmaker for a black audience which had previously not been clearly identified or measured.

Melvin Van Peebles was the director, composer, writer, editor, and star of this film. Having already directed five previous films, he sought financing by a major studio and failed because of the film’s inflammatory racial politics and x-rated sex scenes. Investors felt that the film was earmarked for black audiences only, and when Van Peebles cobbled together the financing for this film, nobody had any clear idea of how large that market was. 

Late in the financing process, Bill Cosby anted up some money to cover a budget shortfall, but he never expected to make a profit. He wouldn't even take an equity position in the production, but just wanted to make the deal a straight loan. In fact, he was surprised that he ever got paid back at all.

If Cosby had taken the equity position, he would have been paid back somewhere between ten and a hundred dollars for each one he invested, because Melvin struck gold, and found out about the upper limit of the market's potential. He made the film for $150,000-$500,000 (depending on who you believe), and grossed $10-$15 million! Sweetback proved to be the black equivalent of Easy Rider. Peter Fonda had proved in 1969 that a cheaply-made independent film appealing flagrantly to the core values of a highly targeted audience, and made by someone who shared those values, could make a lot of money even if that audience was normally thought to consist of non-moviegoers and even of fringe participants in the economy. Just as Peter Fonda had gotten the Hollywood suits to recognize the potential of the hippie/counterculture market, Melvin got the studio boys to recognize the untapped urban African-American market.

 ... Or maybe "like the Black Easy Rider" is the wrong simile ...

Maybe it should be "like the soul Fantastiks", at least from the longevity standpoint, because I read not too long ago that there is a theater somewhere that has been playing Sweet Sweetback continuously since it was first released in 1971. Unfortunately, the stories about this film are a curious mix of fact and fancy, and I don't know which ones to believe.

Whatever the correct comparison might be, the point is that Melvin Van Peebles proved that there was a lot of money to be made by making films for the urban African-American audience. The film credits “the Black Community” in its opening scene, and is dedicated to “all the Brothers and Sisters who are tired of being held down by the Man.” It made a ton of money. Blaxploitation was born.

And the movie?

There is no kind way to say this. This film was made in 19 days and is about as bad as a film can be.

• The lighting is so bad that some scenes just seem to consist of a dark screen with an occasional flickering of light. When I was a kid, a popular school joke for art class was to hand in a blank white piece of paper with two pink dots somewhere in the middle, titled something like "Albino rabbit in a heavy snowstorm". I suppose if we changed to a black piece of paper with some white dots, we might have called it, "Dark skinned guy wearing black clothing in an unlit room on a moonless night." I don't recall Melvin Van Peebles being in any of those classes, but he must have done the same kinds of thinks in his youth, because that's what some of his scenes look like.

• What else could be bad about a movie? You name it, it's here. Sound recorded off a tiny camera mic, a corny collage of neon signs to show the passage of the night, non-actors delivering lines, psychedelic kaleidoscope montages in primary colors, phones ringing after they've been picked up, unrealistic plotting (I'll get to that), long stretches with nothing happening except a guy jogging and jogging and jogging over a jazzy, looping background score. I suppose there must be 30 minutes which consist of nothing but Melvin jogging. The film may be the "black Easy Rider" as a cultural landmark, but evaluated as technical filmmaking, it is the "Black Manos".

I hope that the cost of this film was really on the low end of the estimated range. If Melvin really spent $500,000 on this film, as some claim, I can't even begin to imagine what he did with the money. He used non-union help. He wrote the score and played the lead. He directed and edited. Maybe he paid himself generous salaries for each of his contributions. I had a friend who used to make movies just for fun with a home video camera. He did all the writing. His other buddies and I would play all the roles. Those movies were far superior technically to Sweet Sweetback. The sound was better. The lighting was better. The acting was better. And they were made with a budget which consisted solely of the cost of the blank video tapes.

I guess I have already belabored the point that the film is technically weak.

What about the storyline?

Sweetback, a male street hustler witnesses two white cops beating a black radical of some kind. Sweetback attacks the cops, frees the Panther, and spends the rest of the film running. I should say "jogging". He jogs through urban streets over the official Bart Simpson neon sign montage. He stops at the home of an old friend in a poor neighborhood. As he exists the back door, two cops wave handguns at him. He gets out of that scrape. He joins up with some white bikers, and eventually takes refuge in their tool shed or something. He's in there for five minutes when two cops burst in waving their handguns. He gets out of that scrape. Near the end, he rides on the top of a vehicle, then in the back of another vehicle (unknown to the driver), then hitches a ride with some migrant workers, then hops two different trains, then hops off in the desert - and within about 30 seconds, an army helicopter is checking him out, and some more cops are chasing him. This time, it turns out that Sweetback changed clothes with some hippie, and the cops are following the wrong guy.

Cut to the real Sweetback, now wandering through the mountains, seemingly hundreds of miles from civilization, but before we get a chance to think he's safe, we see two guys chasing him with some vicious dogs, and ...

 ... and you get the idea.

As it turns out, he gets out of that one too. We see the two guys let the dogs go, then sit down for a rest. They hear the dogs stop barking, and assume that to mean the killer animals have found and disabled their quarry.

Then we see a river full of blood and ...

 ... dead dogs.

(That was the one scene in the film that I thought was really cool, except maybe for the scene where the two cops render a guy deaf while questioning him - by blowing off a gun next to each ear.)

After we see the dogs, another word slide comes up and says something like, "Watch out. A baad asssss is coming back to collect some dues."  And then we see Sweetback one last time, still running, while the closing credits crawl. We hear dissonant music and police sirens.

There isn't a lot of dialogue. Melvin is on screen almost continuously, and I don't know if his lines would amount to more than a paragraph. He fucks, he fights, he runs, he fights, he fucks, he runs, he runs, he runs ... People speak to him. People speak about him. But he rarely speaks.

What about the X rating?

Bad Movie Night summed it up:

Very rarely does a film begin with child pornography during the opening credits, then go on to display penises, strap-ons, sex parties, a fat man defecating on camera, brutal beatings, brutal torture (a man has his eardrums blown out one by one by the police), slow and agonizing murders, sex acts with nearly every female character, rotting dead skinned dogs, a gangrenous pus-infected wound, and an interesting use of what is probably urine but quite possibly may be semen.

The sex is explicit - an X or NC-17 by the standards of any age. I've seen softcore porn films with less explicit sex. The film begins with Sweet Sweetback as an orphan boy being taken in by some ladies of the evening. One of those ladies takes his cherry. The young Sweetback is played by Melvin's own son, Mario Van Peebles, who could not have been more than 13 or 14, but the scene includes full frontal nudity from the actress playing the whore, as well as from young Mario. The camera also watches from above as the naked boy movies on top of the woman. The scene could not be filmed at all these days. It would clearly be considered exploitation of a minor.

Later on, Melvin performs in a sex show. In his visit to the biker camp, he jumps on the biker chick. All of these scenes show Melvin's genitalia, as well as extensive nudity from the women. In fact, Melvin admits in an interview on the DVD that he actually had sex with at least one of the women. According to legend, Melvin contracted gonorrhea from one of the actresses while filming one of the sex scenes in the movie. He applied for compensation from the Directors Guild because he "got hurt on the job" and used the money to buy more film.

• Thumbnail previews (1, 2, 3, 4)

• unknown 1 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• unknown 2 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• unknown 3
• unknown 4 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• unknown 5 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5)
• unknown 6
• unknown 7
• unknown 8

Along Came Polly (2004)

This is an average,  moderately entertaining studio-produced romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. Stiller is the most controlled and conservative guy in the world, a risk analyst in the big-time insurance racket. Aniston is a carefree, risk-taking hippie drifting through life with no set plans.

Both Ben Stiller and Hank Azaria did nude scenes, but there was no female nudity. Aniston offered pokies and short-shorts.

• Aniston (1, 2)

OTHER CRAP:

• Movement to Canonize Reagan Stalled by Fact that He Wasn't Catholic.
• Britney Spears Undergoes Knee Surgery After Injury
• Parton's 'Always Love You' is the top "country" love song.
• London's Harrods department store has apologised for selling controversial underwear bearing images of Hindu goddesses in intimate places.
• Life Magazine is back as a weekend newspaper-stuffer. And a proud final chapter it is for the once-honored title.
• The Daily Show - despite the suspension of campaign operations during Reagan tributes, the President will continue to air negative ads, because "the Gipper would have wanted it that way"
• The trailer for Exorcist: The Beginning
• Controversy Brews Over Hillary, Condoleezza in 'Stepford Wives' Ad
• GORBACHEV GETTING TIRED OF ‘TEAR DOWN THIS WALL’ CLIP. Tells Cable Networks to Stop ‘Rubbing it In’
• Halle Berry Attacks Sharon Stone With a Whip
• P.J. O'Rourke on the nature of public political discourse.
• Trailer to "The Passion of the Christ: Part 2"
• Anna Nicole Smith's best sex was with a ghost. (Third story down)
• Benigni's 0% stays unchallenged. Garfield gets a positive review.
• Paris says "no more hummers". She will still give an occasional rimjob.
• Where did the expression "OK" come from? This is probably the source of more urban legends than any other issue.
• Was 'Soul Plane' hijacked by digital pirates?
• You've heard of Open Mike Night and Karaoke and Movieoke? How about Open Screen Night?
• Marvel at NYC Licensing -check out the release date on Spider-Man 3. (A hoax?)
• Alien Vs. Predator Preview
• Here's that memorandum that Rumsfeld doesn't want you to see. (humor)
• Uninvited artist sneaks his works into major museums. Hey, maybe Andy Kaufman IS alive.
• Watch the first eight minutes of Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation
• Mouseketeer admits she needs help. She has hired two full-time counselors to tail her 24/7.
• Posh keeps her distance from other, less famous, spouses
• Larry Bird says b-ball "is a black man's game", and admits white guys can't jump.
• Sociologist says that regular sexual activity can help university students get better grades. I don't know about that. College must have changed a lot, because the guys with the highest grades weren't getting a lot of action in my day. Jeez, imagine if those guys had gotten laid. The teachers would have had to invent a whole new alphabet for grades higher than A.
• Tampa Tribune mistakenly runs an editorial saying The Lightning lost the Stanley Cup final
• A Mormon takes steps in overcoming masturbation - Stop Flogging the Dolphin.. Editorial Comments by Lambert Dolphin. No kidding.
• Lindsay Lohan's Breasts To Star In Own Sitcom. Lindsay Lohan's breasts announced yesterday that they will set out on their own, and that they already have their own deal to star in their own situation comedy.
• No sex please -- we're Japanese
• Seniors say "stick a fork in high school, it's done."
• MovieJuice! looks at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Take A Wiz
• Van Halen reunites - and Eddie has turned into a bad Martin Short character.
• Ever in control, Courtney Love was charged with assault with a deadly weapon
• Michael Badnarik, the next President of the United States. Well, if he does win, we don't have to worry about him blowing the federal budget on fancy clothes.
• Abraham Lincoln wrote a suicide poem?
• Supermodels for Bush, Part 1.
• There are now 63 million registered internet domains. That is one for every 100 people on earth.
• Xtina is Glamour Magazine's Woman of the Year
• Today is Donald Duck's 70th birthday.
• Facial manipulation and disguise
• Give the Mouseketeer any size breasts you prefer.
• Step aside TiVo, here comes Freevo
• TiVo announces major new internet-based iniatives.
• Film industry professionals give Michael Moore's new film a standing ovation.
• Fossil yields clues about Rolling Stones' age. A look way back at Their Arthritic Majesties.
• This week's movies: Garfield - 0% positive reviews. Can it hang in there at zero? It's been a long time since we had a pure zero. The last one was in December 2002 - Benigni's Pinocchio.
• See the trailer for Wimbledon. In just two summer weeks, a British tennis player who was ranked 157th in the world (Paul Bettany), and generally considered to be on his last legs as a professional player, gets his one last chance to win both the All-England Lawn Tennis Championships on the grassy courts of Wimbledon... and the heart of the rising star "bad girl of tennis" (Kirsten Dunst) as well.
• Venus Transit at Sunrise

Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the ones above, since it's sorta in real time.

Click here to submit a URL for Other Crap

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

Words from Scoop.

.avi's from Shiloh.

.wmv files made by Scoop from Shiloh's .avi's.

Classics

• Barbara Bach full frontal in a Sergio Corbucci movie, Ecco noi per esempio. No help from me on the movie. Once you see the clip, you'll know as much about it as I do. I suppose that she was once a Bond girl (The Spy Who Loved Me), and has been married to Ringo Starr since the beginning of time. (.avi) (.wmv)

• Caren Kaye in My Tutor. I don't know what she did before or after this movie, but so many of my friends had a crush on her back then, just because of this scene. (.avi) (.wmv)

• Jamie Lee Curtis shows off some of the best breasts in screen history, in Trading Places.  (.avi) (.wmv)

Perhaps these tips will help if you have trouble with the codecs for these movies:

Shiloh says:

FYI when I hypercam vids to make the file size smaller I use DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion for the video compressor, then I use virtualdub to compress the audio. The properties for the vids says the video codec:  DivX Decoder Filter & audio codec:  Morgan Stream Switcher which I'm not familiar with. When I compress the audio with virtualdub I use MPEG Layer-3.  A friend of mine told me about compressing the audio about (6) mos. ago. Like I said previously, only been capping for a year & a half & I'm no expert. Hopefully this info will help members with the proper codecs for my vids.

 

When I cap big brother's I use hypercam mostly & sdp & asfrecorder if the set up allows me. I stopped using camtasia cause the file sizes were always too big, could never figure out the process, over my head lol, plus it cost too much to buy in my opinion.

A reader says:

You mentioned that some users were having trouble with the videos on your site. There is a tool designed to determine what codec is needed for a video. http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ Hope this is useful to you or your users.

Scoop says:

I made the .wmv versions of each video. The codecs for these: Windows Video V8, Windows Audio 9. The upside of these is that you know the codecs, and they'll play in the Windows Media Player. The downside is that they are slightly larger, and slightly lower quality.

If someone described each scene of Super Troopers to you...in detail... you'd probably think the movie sucked. I did when my chortling fifteen-yr-old nephew went through each scene, chapter and verse. Couldn't see why he or anyone else in possession of more than two neurons and one synapse (pretty much leaves out cicadas) would laugh at that shit. Then I watched it and despite my best intentions, I chuckled like a lunatic.

Imagine my eagerness to see the second heaping helping of what the Super Trooper zanies had to offer. Imagine, also, my disappointment at what they produced. Club Dread is simply dreadful, a record-breaking waste of time and talent on a scale that Pluto Nash worked hard to establish. In this case I could describe the scenes, you would say, "That sucks!" and you, prescient being that you are, would be correctamundo. They even went and wasted Bill Paxton, who can't seem to help being funny no matter the subject... until now. A fucked up mess, that's Club Dread.

But that brings me to Jordan Ladd. Since the Funhouse has become the unofficial Jordan Ladd nekkid site I thought it wise to join a dozen other fellows of the Vidcappers Guild and do Jordan. As it were. In fact I went all obsessive on ya and made nine collages of Jordan Ladd toplessness. Numbers 4, 6 and 9 are single frames, the rest are composed of frames numbering 2 or 3 or some other integer greater than one.

And while I was at it I capped the stunt double who did the gymnastic work for Jordan. I said to myself, "Take a look. Maybe IMDB says who she is." Yes I did. Sho' 'nuff IMDB does name two women as stunt doubles. Better yet it identifies one of them, Dina Lynn Margolin, as a former USA National gymnast. Eureka! To my aged eyes, that's a two plus two equals four type situation. So I'm sending along two collages of she who appears to Dina Lynn, appropriately labeled.

• Jordan Ladd (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
• Dina Lynn Margolin (1, 2)

• Isabella (aka Isabella Camille), showing all 3 B's in a couple of sex scenes. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Isabella .wmvs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

• Nicole Kidman shows brief views of all 3 B's

• Here are some bonus Kidman 'caps (not by LC) (1, 2, 3)

• Melora Walters, the "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights" co-star goes topless and also shows a bit of bum.

• Jen Apgar, Katherine Durio and Taryn Manning all show some brief skin.

ARNOLD RETURNS TO THE SCREEN
Going Around The World With Seven Women - Just as Arnold Schwarzenegger is gaining respect in politics, an unwelcome reminder of his wilder days is surfacing. The movie "Around The World in 80 Days," which he shot before announcing his candidacy, is finally about to be released. Arnold has a cameo as a drinking, belching, leering, oversexed Turkish prince with seven wives, one for each night of the week. He paws the hero's girlfriend as he suggests she take over Tuesdays. Arnold declined to promote it, but he called it "a wonderful family movie."